Laptop Gaming On A Budget

Acer, a top brand in computing products, launched the Aspire VX 15 locally a few weeks back. And luckily for us this month, the VX 15 arrived in our office and we could not wait to test out this budget-minded laptop for gamers.

The variant that’s available in Malaysia is equipped with some mouth-watering specs. It signs in with an Intel Core i7-7700HQ 2.8GHz Quad-Core processor, a 4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX1050 Ti, and 4GB of DDR4 RAM. If 4GB of RAM is insufficient for you, it can be upgraded to a maximum of 32GB RAM. A decent 15.6-inch Full HD display garnishes the top of the laptop, with a 1280 x 720 webcam. Two ample sounding speakers can also be found on the laptop.

When powering up the laptop for the first time, you have to go through several hoops, as per usual for Windows 10. Windows Hello makes an appearance, and you could configure it to unlock your user with it. Considering the hardware, it’s also important to update the NVIDIA driver, so that you would be able to play all the latest Steam or Battlenet games without issues.

During our tests, we managed to fire up a few games and test it on the laptop. As expected, running the latest games and even navigating windows sometimes seem like an uphill battle. This is most likely due to it only having 4GB of RAM. We would suggest you to upgrade the RAM if you plan to purchase this laptop, since it will definitely prove to be a performance bottleneck. We found that the laptop remained relatively cool throughout our testing, but it is recommended to prop it on a stable surface if you wish to game, and not to burn your thighs.

If you wish to game on a bigger monitor, it is possible to plug a HDMI cable into the laptop and connect it with a bigger TV or gaming monitor for party events. The keyboard on the laptop is decent and does the job, but we have a gripe against having the power button located precariously on the keyboard itself, making it too easy to miss-click it. Luckily, tapping the power button does not power it off.

CHIP CONCLUDE: A decent gaming laptop with an affordable price, worth getting if you are an on-the-go gamer, but you should absolutely upgrade its RAM so it can be a bigger beast that’s reliable to game on.